How to record Mac screen with QuickTime Player

If you need to record a video of what is happening on the Mac screen, then it can be done using the QuickTime Player program that is already in MacOS, that is, finding and installing additional software for basic tasks for creating screencasts are not required.

Below — about how to record video from the screen of your MacBook, iMac or other Mac this way: nothing complicated here. Unpleasant limitation of this method is that if you can’t record a video played in this moment sound (but you can do screen recording with microphone audio).

Can also be useful: excellent free videoconverter HandBrake (Mac, Windows and Linux).

Use QuickTime Player to record screen video from MacOS

To start you will need to run QuickTime Player: use the Spotlight search, or just locate it in the Finder, as shown in the screenshot below.

Next you should do the following steps to record the Mac screen and save the recorded video

In the top menu bar click «File» and select «New screen recording».

Dialog box opens the screen recording Mac. It does not offer the user any special settings, but clicking on the little arrow next to the record button you can record sound from microphone, and display the clicks in the screen recording.

Click on the red round record button. A notification will appear, prompting you to either just click on it and record the whole screen or to select with the mouse or with the trackpad the screen area you want to record.

After recording, click «Stop» to be displayed in the process in the notification bar of MacOS.

A window will open with the already recorded videos, which allows you to view and optionally export to YouTube, Facebook and beyond.

Video you can just save to a convenient location on your computer or laptop: this will be automatically offered to you when you close the video, and is also available in menu «File» — «Export» (this here you can choose video resolution or device for playback on which to save).

As you can see, the process of recording video from screen Mac built-in MacOS is pretty simple and will be understandable even to a novice user.

Although this recording method has some limitations:

The impossibility of recording the reproduced sound.

Only one format for saving video files (files are saved in QuickTime format — .mov).

Anyway, for some non-professional applications, it can be a good option, because it does not require installation of any additional programs.

May be useful: the Best program to record video from the screen (some of the programs are available not only for Windows but also macOS).